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Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Specialist for the IBM System Storage product line at the
IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor
to IBM's developerWorks. In 2011, Tony celebrated his 25th year anniversary with IBM Storage on the same day as the IBM's Centennial. He is
author of the Inside System Storage series of books. This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services. You can also follow him on Twitter @az990tony.
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Recently, I spoke with Jarrett Potts, my long-time friend and former IBM colleague, who now works as Director of Strategic Marketing over at STORServer. If you have never heard of STORServer, it is a company that makes purpose-built backup appliances.

What is a Backup Appliance? It is an integrated solution of hardware and software that serves a single purpose: backup and recovery. STORServer Enterprise Backup Appliance (EBA) combines IBM's high-end x86 M4 server, IBM disk and tape storage, and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) backup software.

(Fun Fact: The 2012 IBM year-end financial results were announced last month. IBM not only continues its #1 lead in servers overall, but has the #1 marketshare for high-end x86 servers, market-leading disk and tape storage hardware, and market leading backup software.)

To determine the appropriate size of your backup appliance, the folks at STORServer help you every step of the way. They figure out the number of TB you will backup every day, and even help configure all of the TSM server parameters to achieve the policies that make the most sense for your organization.

The appliance can backup every type of data, from databases and Virtual Machines (VMs) to documents, spreadsheets, and other unstructured data.

Are you then left with a solution too complicated to run yourself? No. The STORServer Console is an easy-to-use GUI for ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Plus, your friends at STORServer are only a phone call away in case you have any questions.

(FTC Disclosure: I work for IBM, and STORSever is an approved IBM Business Partner that uses IBM hardware and software to build their solution. I have no financial interest in STORServer, and was not paid by STORServer to mention their company or products on my blog. This post may be considered a celebrity endorsement of STORServer and its Enterprise Backup Appliances.)

Perhaps my readers feel that I am a bit biased in describing a TSM-based solution, and you want a second opinion. No worries, I understand. In the latest 165-page [2012 DCIG Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide], the STORServer models ranked very high. Here is an excerpt:

"Nowhere is this demand for purpose built appliances more evident than in the rise of purpose
built backup appliances (PBBAs) over the last few years and their anticipated growth rate
going forward. A recent market analysis performed by IDC found that worldwide PBBA revenue totaled $2.4 billion in 2011 which was a 42.4 percent increase over the prior year.

This scoring came into play in preparing this Buyer's Guide
as the STORServer EBA 3100 model scored so highly
overall that it fell outside of the two (2) standard deviations
that DCIG generally uses as a guideline for inclusion and
exclusion of products.

The reason DCIG included this model in this Buyer's Guide
whereas in other situations it might not is that DCIG is
unaware of any other backup appliance(s) from any other
providers that come close to matching the EBA 3100's
software and hardware attributes. As such, DCIG felt it
would be doing STORServer specifically and the market
generally a disservice by not highlighting in this Buyer's
Guide that such a backup appliance existed and was
generally available for purchase."

Backup Appliance Models

Score

Ranking

1.

STORServer EBA 3100

91.70

ENTERPRISE

2.

Symantec NetBackup 5220 Backup Appliance

87.11

Recommended

3.

STORServer EBA 2100

86.90

Recommended

4.

STORServer EBA 1100

85.70

Recommended

5.

STORServer EBA 800

85.60

Recommended

6.

Symantec Backup Exec 3600 Appliance

78.83

Excellent

7.

Unitrends Recovery-823

76.55

Excellent

8.

RackTop EBR-FE

76.50

Excellent

9.

Unitrends Recovery-833

76.25

Excellent

10.

Unitrends Recovery-822

76.15

Excellent

The STORServer is ideal for small and medium-sized business (SMB), but can scale quite large to handle business growth. If you are currently unhappy with your current backup environment, and feel now is the time to look around for a better way of taking backups, you won't go wrong choosing a solution based on IBM's market-leading server and storage hardware with Tivoli Storage Manager software.